Ram Puts Some Narcotics Dealers on Run, Police Say

Fear of the Los Angeles Police Department’s controversial motorized battering ram is causing some drug dealers to close down their heavily fortified “rock houses,” or move operations outside the city, several high-ranking police officials said Wednesday.

The drug dealers remaining in Los Angeles are operating far more cautiously, moving more frequently, or taking other steps to thwart a stepped-up police crackdown, the officials said after a panel discussion at the Police Academy on “Entering Fortified Structures.” The discussion was closed to the public and the news media.

Some dealers change locations every three or four days, some have resumed selling on the street and others have moved to upstairs apartments to get out of range of the battering ram, according to police officials.

Twice, officers have used the 14-foot steel battering ram, attached to an armored military vehicle, to break down the walls of suspected “rock houses” where cocaine is sold in rock form.

Now the drug dealers are “trying to devise a countertactic,” Assistant Chief Marvin D. Iannone, head of the department’s Office of Operations, said.

“We’ve started to see some evidence now of these rock dealers reacting to these V-100s (motorized battering ram). We have some indication they are starting to move outside the city,” Iannone said.

“The use of the V-100, it seems, has had a psychological impact on the criminals. The pressure is starting to pay dividends,” added Capt. Noel Cunningham, head of the department’s field enforcement narcotics section.

Twice, occupants of rock houses have opened their doors when police simply called out that they had a battering ram at the ready, Narcotics Division Capt. Bob Blanchard said.

There is no way of determining the constantly fluctuating number of rock houses in the city, but police estimate there were about 200 of them before the battering ram was first used on Feb. 6 to break into a suspected rock house in Pacoima, Blanchard said.

Despite vehement protests from civil rights, religious and community leaders in Pacoima, the battering ram was used again on Feb. 13 on a suspected rock house in South-Central Los Angeles. That time, neighbors applauded the operation.

Since then, there has been a “slight reduction in the number of rock houses,” Blanchard said. “It’s not dramatic but there is a reduction. Sellers are telling our undercover buy people, and informants are telling us, that the drug dealers are getting out of the city.”

In particular, undercover officers and police informants are reporting a small-scale exodus of rock house operators from South-Central Los Angeles--the area believed to have the highest number of rock houses in the city--to Lynwood and East Los Angeles, officials said.

But Lt. Dale Fossey of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s narcotics detail said deputies have noticed no recent increase in the number of rock houses in those two areas, which are in the sheriff’s jurisdiction.

Called Less Brazen

Lt. Dick Koskelin, head of the Police Department’s South Bureau narcotics detail, said rock house dealers “are not quite as brazen about it as they were in the past.

“They’re not allowing people just to walk up to a barred door with a slot in it and make a buy through a door anymore,” he said. “Typically people are having to go inside. The message that went out was: ‘By God, they’re serious!’ ”

Some rock house operators are changing locations every three to four days to make it difficult for police to obtain and serve search warrants, authorities said.

“By the time we get there they are gone. But it has to be pretty terrible on their business to do that,” Cunningham said.

Tactical Moves

Others are moving their operations to upstairs locations and apartment buildings to thwart the battering ram, Cunningham said. In a few cases, sources said, police have found parked cars with flat tires parked in front of suspected rock houses as if to create a barrier against the ram.